Public safety agencies increasingly realize the importance of deploying multimedia applications such as streaming video. Prior art public safety wireless networks, such as the P25 systems are narrow band systems and lack the speed to support these applications. Therefore, public safety agencies are very much interested in deploying broadband wireless networks to support these new applications. Many public safety agencies have already expressed that LTE is their technology of choice for their broadband wireless networks.
A nationwide broadband network dedicated to public safety agencies would pose severe challenges: High installation costs, slow rate of deployment, complex and expensive operating and maintenance activities. One approach being considered is a public-private partnership whereby a commercial licensee would acquire additional spectrum at reduced price then use its own funds to roll out a network serving both consumers and public safety users. From the perspective of public safety, by sharing the infrastructure between public safety users and consumers, deployment costs would be lower and/or subsidized by the commercial service operator. Network deployment could be more rapid than that of a dedicated public safety network. Management of the network would also be the responsibility of the commercial operator, who has the expertise and is better equipped to manage a national wireless network. From the perspective of the commercial network operator, the spectrum can be acquired at a reduced rate. Since the network has more spectrum than a standalone commercial network, it can accommodate more users and thus more potential revenue.
Under such a scenario consumers and public safety users would contend for the same radio resources available. Recent rulings of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stipulated that in such a shared network, in times of emergency, public safety users would be given priority access to a first fraction of the combined spectrum and preemptive rights over another, second fraction. Current LTE standards are not optimized for call admission control appropriate to balance the needs of public safety users and consumers.
In view of the foregoing it would be desirable to provide an improved system and method to accommodate public safety users and consumers in a shared LTE network.
Referring to FIG. 1 illustrates a high level prior art network architecture of LTE. LTE User Equipment (UE) communicates wirelessly with an evolved node B (eNodeB) LTE base station. The Mobility Management Entity (MME) handles authentication and signaling for connection and mobility management. The serving gateway (S-GW) acts as mobility anchor for inter-eNodeB handover. The PDW Gateway (P-GW) provides interfaces to other IP networks and serves as the global mobility anchor for the UE. The Policy and Charging Rule function (PCRF) which supports per session QoS and associated billing. The Home Subscriber Server (HSS) maintains the user profiles. If the network operator also deploys an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the HSS can be shared between the LTE network and IMS.